As the author noted in Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb, Greece “has been the main focus for migrants. Swarming out of Turkey, thousands of settlers made for the Hellene islands. In January and February of 2016 alone, more than 120,000 alleged asylum seekers poured into the Peloponnese and nearby isles…”
As soon as the tsunami started in 2015, mirabile dictu, newly-invented NGOs “suddenly” appeared on Lesvos, Chios, Kos, and other Greek islands. These mysterious organizations then did something entirely inexplicable: they immediately dismissed all the aid workers who had been helping the genuine refugees. Moreover, almost NONE of these NGOs had Arabic or French speakers on staff. (N.B., French is a tongue widely used in the Middle East.) Yet, all spoke English, a language which only educated people in Southwest Asia understand.Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? frequently alludes to questionable outside forces helping to promote the migrant wave. The book discusses involvement of the European Union (EU), Germany, and Israel, among others. Our interlocutor added some more pieces to the jigsaw puzzle, helping add some clarity to the picture.

Outside Influence.

In Greece, the start of the migrant flood coincided with the election of Alexis Tsipras as Greek prime minister in January 2015. A man who had campaigned on Greek sovereignty and resistance to outside pressure, Tsipras acceded to the harsh economic austerity measures which the EU, Germany, and the International Monetary Fund laid down in July 2015. This was followed by, our interlocutor said, a U.S.-imposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post, the SOFA ” offers legal defense to both militaries while training in the other’s country.” Voltaire.net noted that Greece has a similar arrangement with only one other country, the United States. As the author was told, this threw 70 years of Greek support for Palestinians and that country’s status as a trusted 3rd party in the Middle East-North Africa region (MENA) out the window. Israel has been training in Cyprus, most likely the part which Greek Cypriots control. Additionally, our contact said the Israeli air force immediately took over the Kasteli air force base in Crete. The Jerusalem Post wrote that Israeli warplanes, in a test, staged mock attacks against the Russian S-300 anti-missile system installed on the Greek island of Crete. Moreover, the author was told, Greek navy ships are now under German control and mostly lie idle in harbor, while NATO and Frontex vessels (European border and coast guard agency) cruise Hellenic waters. Deutsche Welle, the German international broadcaster, reports that German “humanitarian” vessels help bring more migrants into Europe. Isn’t there a link?

How Do The Migrants Make It?

On Lesvos, one of the two or three beaches they regularly land on, is close to our contact’s house. Nearly every night (it was most often night) boats full of aliens would arrive, everyone would disembark, and then destroy the boats, rendering them “shipwrecked” under the law of the sea. After changing clothes, the migrants would follow their mobile phone instructions and march into Mytilini port. No one had to give directions, they knew the way. Despite the tragic photos circulated by the media at the time, most of these “refugees”/migrants looked healthy, were fit, and were even well-dressed. (Meanwhile, enterprising old men waited on the beach to collect the abandoned engines and, in some cases, the inflatables, for re-sale. Greece is now flooded with powerful outboard engines.)

Here’s A Few Questions

WHO provided this endless supply of engines? This endless supply of inflatables? (now in six figures). NOT “smugglers” because smugglers return WITH their boats.
Moreover, why is Greece regularly castigated for keeping the migrants in tents at “hot spots”. (These are, according to Human Rights Watch, violence-prone “centers…[originally] established for the reception, identification, and processing of asylum seekers and migrants.”) The Greek government, our interlocutor commented, makes no protest and takes the abuse like a “good bunny”. In fact, the hot spots are closed NGO-territory-only and the Greek government, including police and firemen, cannot enter unless invited. It is the wealthy, fake NGOs that keep migrants in worthless tents, eating disgusting meals at €7 (about US$8.50) a meal, while Greek street charities (particularly the Orthodox church) dish out healthy, fresh meals with a liter of water per person at €0.35 cents (US$0.40) a serving. (It was clear from the start that a lot of EU people and businesses – not necessarily Greek – have made a fortune from this, at the expense of EU taxpayers.)

And does child and organ trafficking take place at these camps? So many children are unaccounted for, and there is no way for anyone to monitor boats going in and out of the camps.
Another question: would a parent, surviving in a Turkish refugee camp, send an 8-year old child off to Europe ALONE “in hope of a better life”? (This is the shopworn story told in Europe and the U.S.) Well, as our contact said, “I am a parent. My answer to that is ‘Never! We stick together! Ok…some parents may have sold these children at their point of origin, but….. Greeks and MENA people are fanatically family-minded.'”

Politics and Money. Increasing Questions.

Continuing, our interlocutor analyzed Germany’s internal politics and delved into the vast sums of money going to the migrants, raising more questions.
Thoroughly drubbed in last year’s elections, to save themselves politically, German chancellor Merkel’s CDU and the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD), headed by Martin Shulz, have announced that Germany’s rejected migrants will be sent back to their point-of-origin, such as Greece and Italy, thus reviving the Dublin Treaty. (Under the Dublin accords, asylum-seekers must apply for that status in the first EU country reached.) Our source noted that, despite EU claims, until last year Greece received no money for the migrants. (After these are released from the “hot spots”, they go to Greek army barracks where they are housed in [personally-observed]spare but humane and well organized conditions.). Now, our contact asserts that Greece has received several million Euros to house migrants rent-free in fully equipped and furnished apartments in Athens, Thessaloniki, and elsewhere around the country.
One of these apartments is in our interlocutor’s building, in a “good” part of central Athens, next to the Hilton. The flat is larger than our contact’s and has everything: a washing machine, air conditioning, etc. Utilities are paid for. Medical care is free. Food is delivered twice weekly from UNRWA, plus a small sum of spending money (which UNRWA always tries to make smaller). Supposedly these are temporary accommodations, just for three months, but the last group spent 10 months there before decamping for Thessaloniki where they found jobs. (WHAT jobs? At what pay?) And an additional question, how is the UN Relief and Works Agency, tied to Palestinian aid, involved in this?
This is at a time when half of Greek families are surviving on one grandparent’s pension, more than half have no access to medical care, when many Greeks have no electricity, and too many are homeless. Half have no jobs (with 67% of the youth being unemployed). The old economy overwhelmingly consisted of tiny private sector family businesses).
And, Finally, One More Question
The rape reports which started coming out of Germany and Sweden during the past years puzzled most Greeks because – except for a very few incidents – NOTHING like that happened there. So it was only now, this past Christmas, that in Lesvos these things began taking place.
As the author commented in Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos?, migrant attacks on women appeared carefully coordinated, likely using their ubiquitous and expensive cell phones. Will that be repeated now in Greece?
Look at this.
Things seem to be replicating themselves. Here’s some news from Lesvos, our source said, from friends returning to Athens after Christmas holidays:
Around 100 migrants were arriving every day by boat, and sometimes several boats a day. Instead of landing on the usual beaches, they were arriving directly at the port of Mytilini because of the weather. Supposedly, smugglers brought them BUT, no “smugglers” were arrested, and the boats would return to Turkey right away.
All of the migrants were men: no women, no grannies, no children. They were all about 35-40 and spoke English. As they were led through the town, they would pop into cafes and bars and talk to the girls: “‘Hey beautiful, shall we drink something together?” without their minders stopping them. Three girls living in the city center said that every time they went out, they were being hit on.
Is this really post-traumatic stress disorder? Is it really a culture clash? Or is it an effort to change Europe’s way of life? Is this happening because journalists are not doing their job?
Our contact asked how NOT ONE journalist worldwide made even one tiny day trip to the Turkish side of the sea from mid-2015 onward….not one person in the whole world, it seemed, had even one drop of curiosity about the “smugglers”. It wasn’t as if the two-hour commuter ferry Ayvalik-Mytilini had stopped running. And, speaking of that ferry, that is how the real migrants before 2015 used to arrive, WITH their passports.

And Finally…

According to the U.S. Department of State, “Geoffrey R. Pyatt, a career member of the Foreign Service, class of Career Minister, was sworn in as the U.S. Ambassador to the Hellenic Republic in September 2016.
`He served as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine from 2013-2016, receiving the State Department’s Robert Frasure Memorial Award in recognition of his commitment to peace and alleviation of human suffering in eastern Ukraine.”
The lack of peace and appearance of human suffering in the Ukraine came from the Obama Administration’s policies, formulated and implemented both by Pyatt and Victoria Nuland, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
Is there a U.S. plan for Greece to match that for the Ukraine?

“Uncle Joe” Stalin once said that “one death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” At a conservative estimate, Iraqis form 1 million statistics as the result of the most recent U.S. war of aggression, begun in March 2003. This number excludes the 500,000 children buried because of American restrictions on Iraqi imports of medicine and food between 1991 and 2003, a number former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright deemed “worth it”. It also excludes the nearly 2 million adults who also did not survive those draconian “sanctions” during that same period.

But what of those who survived the sanctions, the bombed-out housing, the devastated water-treatment facilities, the wrecked power plants, the collapsed bridges, and the wiped-out roads? The people who survived the “rules of engagement” devised by the War Department in peaceful Washington, D.C.? You know, the families whose front doors were kicked in by the new Crusaders, ready, willing, and able to shoot anyone whose looks they did not like?

Well, there are roughly 2 million of these who fled such situations, who have been forced out of their homes (or what’s left of their homes), to seek shelter and sustenance, where and when and however they might find them. And those are the ones still in Iraq.

There are also an estimated 2 million more who navigated the radioactive, poisonous, depleted uranium dust from expended U.S. munitions and found refuge in neighboring countries, lands such as Syria, denounced by the United States and Israel as supporting terrorism, and Lebanon, a country devastated and destabilized by American and Israeli pressures and policies. Unlike Israel and America, Syria, bleeding Lebanon, and nearby Jordan are poor countries, short of water, food, and resources, barely able to feed and shelter their own people.

Iraq once numbered about 25 million inhabitants. The approximately 4 million “internally displaced” and “refugees” together comprise about 15% of the population. The ones abroad are mostly members of what was once the Arab world’s most educated and populous middle class, the very people needed in any country for stability and growth, the very people that a devastated Iraq cannot afford to lose.

American policy towards Iraq has been equal-opportunity terrorism: the 2 million Chaldean Catholics, Muslim Shii, Muslim Sunni, and others, all left because of fear: fear of death from above, fear of death threats, fear of murder, fear of kidnappings. They also feared religious violence engendered by U.S.-sponsored militias, U.S.-backed sects of one kind or another–or of American-sponsored death squads designed to trigger Hatfield/McCoy-style internecine violence.

This is an unfortunately familiar pattern. The American South saw it during the War Between the States. Germany and Japan saw it during the 1939 war. It is a pattern designed to dehouse, deculturalize, destabillize, and destroy a country and its people. In this case, it is a country and a people who invented the wheel, who invented writing, who invented accountable government. Iraq is a country and a people with 5,000 years of recorded history behind them, a history reduced to dust and ashes, like the Mesopotamian treasures of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.

That’s the general. Here’s the specific.

One Story

Our interlocutor is an Iraqi refugee who knows first hand how badly things have gone wrong. To save herself, she managed to make it out of the Black Land, first to Jordan, then the United States. For our contact’s safety and the safety of her family, still at the mercy of unknown and unknowable death squads, she will remain nameless. She can tell you, though, that she is educated with a university degree in linguistics and a certificate as an English translator. She is Arab, she is Muslim, she is the daughter of a Sunni and a Shii.

After the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, in violation of the federal Constitution and the Law of Nations, our contact told us that it was a common practice for mysterious people to turn up at the doors of Iraqi houses and “ask” the inhabitants to leave. Then, typically, a strange family would move in, taking ownership and control of the original owner’s effects. No one knew who these people were, no one knew who had done the asking. In fact, no one wanted to know, it was far too dangerous to ask awkward questions. The police or what was left of the authorities, once the Americans and their Coalition Provisional Government had dissolved the civil power, simply stood by and did nothing to help those forced out of their homes.

These involuntary “donors” became the Displaced. They had to stay in Iraq because they had no money to leave the country, they had no funds to bribe local officials in nearby Jordan to permit their entry if they did. They were not allowed to work in Jordan because they could not get permanent residence, although, if you had the equivalent of US$150,000 to put at the disposal of the Jordanian government, you could stay in the Hashemite Kingdom.

If, somehow, you got to Jordan, you couldn’t afford a place to live because you were not allowed to work. And you also couldn’t afford medicine or a doctor. Our interlocutor, reliant on saved funds, was sick for two months because she didn’t have the equivalent of US$40 for antibiotic injections. She recovered only when an Iraqi doctor in Jordan managed to get some medicine from the local hospital for her.

If you, like our translator, made it to the Hashemite Kingdom, created as the result of British policy towards its League of Nations mandate in the 1920s, you had to leave every three months to renew your temporary residence. This exposed you to murder, rape, and other violence along the road during the 10-hour trip to Iraq. Unlike I-95 in the United States, this thoroughfare was laid out in the middle of nowhere. The return was equally bad, with the traveler still a moving target. And, at the Jordanian frontier, there was an added “fillip”: the border guards demanded a US$500 bribe to admit you.

If you were fortunate and had the money, all you usually had to contend with was harsh looks by the men with the keys to the Kingdom. If, like our interlocutor, you were unfortunate, you could be sent back with no explanation to try again, making a fruitless 20-hour round-trip. She endured this three times. On some occasions, if Fortuna smiled, you could pay the bribe in US$100 installments–on top of what you shelled out for food and rent. Then, there was the “required” US$50 blood test also demanded for admittance (something the U.S. Department of Homeland Insecurity has not yet discovered.)

Our contact did this for two and a half years.

And what did she trade for her life? It wasn’t a mess of pottage.

In a peaceful Middle East, there is less stress and a lower cost of living, along with familial and community support for individuals. Here, in the World’s Only Remaining Superpower, there are shoddily-built houses, high taxes, complicated licensing laws, and a lawsuit to remedy every imagined slight. There is also out-of-control Capitalism, with banksters firmly in control of society, turning the American dream into the American nightmare–for profit.

If you’re an Iraqi refugee and get to the United States, we were told that the federal government provides you with four months of support. During that time, you must become fluent in the King’s English, find a job, obtain a place to live, get a driver’s license, buy a car, and…and…and… Some people, caught between a rock and hard place, have gone back to Iraq, to the war without end, and, with the unknown and unknowable killers, to a life that is nasty, brutish, and short. If you’re an American citizen and lose your job, as far too many have recently done, it’s hard enough to find a new position. What’s it like for the Iraqi who no speaka da English and who hasn’t a clue as to how to start electricity service in his apartment? If the refugee does get a job, he’s the last hired and the first fired. And he still must pay the rent and the electric bill and the gas bill, and the water bill–if he’s fortunate and someone or some organization helps him navigate the unfamiliar bureaucracy, by no means a certainty.

Our contact told us that she wanted to tell part of her story because she’s tired:

of linking herself to the Americans
of the repercussions of that relationship
of being alone
of not having her own space
of not having any connection to other people, even if it’s only sharing meals
of being separated from her family
of not having her own family
of leaving Iraq and never being able to go back.
Working for the United States in Iraq, 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for $450 a month helped keep food on the table but also left her and her family open to death threats and ruined her reputation. After all, no good Arab girl spends such an amount of time with strange men, particularly soldiers. Even in the U.S., the Iraqi community looks askance at such a history and at a woman living alone–so she stays away from her fellow countrymen and their gossip, intensifying her anomie.

A Second, Related Story

Another Iraqi refugee, a man, told an all-too similar tale. He didn’t favor Saddam Hussein and wanted to work with the American government to help rebuild Iraq, making it a better country. Did he succeed? As the Arabs say, “La, mu mumkin”. (“No, not possible”.)

Working with civil affairs units, the field commander’s link to the civil authorities in his area of action, our contact told us that he had liked working with them to reconstruct Iraq. He felt that these soldiers, unlike combat troops, were motivated by their compassion and desire to restore Iraq to what it had been before the attack and invasion. Our refugee contact noted that he worked with the men who sought to restore services such as water and electricity. Translating and helping oversee projects, he gradually learned that the U.S. did not do as much as he had hoped for. The lengthy “to do” lists never got funded and he began to develop the feeling that his job was beginning to endanger not only himself but his family, a cornerstone of life in the Arab world. He then swung 180 degrees from his initial support for and enthusiasm about the American invasion, not unlike many Iraqis who became frustrated by the Americans and who later turned their anger on those associated with the U.S. occupation. He and other unfortunates became the direct targets of gangs, i.e., those, such as former Ba’ath ruling party members or those, who, for whatever reason, hated the United States and anyone associated with its representatives in Iraq.

Exposed and chased by outlaws on two occasions (once escaping only through a deliberate car crash), he quit his job while in his last year of college. Thinking that cutting his ties to the Americans would damp down the furor, he found that his associates were still in danger because of their connections to him. One of his best friends, with whom he had started the last two semesters, had been murdered. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, underlined by 9 mm bullets, he and some friends fled to nearby Syria,. After four months there, his family advised him not to return. Buoyed by savings from his job with the U.S. government, he navigated Syrian society without incident. Even in Syria, he tried, he said, to avoid his friends for fear that their ties to the United States might subject them to unwanted interest by the intelligence services.

After some time, our interlocutor returned to Iraq to finish his schooling but could not discuss his flight because it would hamper taking final exams. After another friend had been ambushed and murdered, he rode cabs and public transportation, using circuitous routes. With American help, he armed himself and acquired a license to carry a pistol, itself a danger because the authorization was written in Arabic and English, tipping off anyone who stopped him that he was linked to the occupation authorities.

Speaking Out is Hard to Do

Like our first interviewee, this gentlemen decided to speak out because, as he put it, “Enough Is Enough!” People outside Iraq need to learn about the consequences of the war of aggression and people outside Iraq must begin to realize the depths of Iraqi suffering. He told us that his risk has ended but the agony of his family and of others still continues, with everyone still in jeopardy. He said that he can’t go home to visit his people and that Iraqis are still dying in unconscionable numbers.

But What About the Others? Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the United States

In an effort to be fair and balanced, we called the Embassies of Syria, Jordan, Israel, as well as the U.S. Department of State for their comments on the refugee crisis. As might be expected, the Syrian Embassy’s spokesman, reflecting the Ambassador’s straightforward approach to the refugee crisis, was most open, approachable, and informative. The Jordanian Embassy demanded written questions and, to date, has not responded to the ones we e-mailed. The Israeli Embassy’s Political Section sent us to a non-working number in their Public Affairs Office. And an official at the U.S. Department of State, speaking on background, told us how the refugees in Syria and Jordan were far fewer than we believed and that the United States had greatly increased the number it was willing to take, from 1,500 in Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 to 13,000 in FY 08 with plans to up that to 17,000 in FY 09.

Syria

Ahmed Salkini, the Syrian Embassy press spokesman, told us that the humanitarian crisis (and the American response to it) is staggering and nearly incomprehensible. There are roughly 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria (8% of the Syrian population, clustered in and around Damascus) with about 500,000 more in Jordan. He said that the Bush Administration had demonstrated apathy towards the problem (equal to an influx of 24 million people into the U.S., just short of all the people living in Canada). Under Bush, the U.S. government simply sat on its hands or tried to ignore the tragedy. He hoped President Obama would take a second look at the issue. Mr. Salkini noted that, in dealing with the matter, there were long and short-term goals, first to eventually return the refugees to their homeland and, most pressingly, to deal with the immediate distress of the Iraqis at home and abroad: providing medical care, jobs, housing, etc. through use of governmental and international resources.

The Embassy spokesman noted that the Syrian government heavily subsidized the refugees, paying for health care, education, and security, adding that no refugee in his country had been killed by sectarian violence. Mr. Salkini did observe that Syria, regrettably, was beginning to impose a quota on Iraqi refugees, changing its once open visa policy. In the past, he said, no visas for Arabs had been required. But now, Iraqi visas are issued on a case by case basis, with criteria favoring the most vulnerable, including those listed as such by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), and people whose admission would help both Syria and Iraqi, such as businessmen and merchants who can establish their own firms. With unemployment measured by Damascus at 10-12%, our contact noted that an open-ended policy of admitting Iraqi refugees would add more strains to an already-imperiled economy.

When asked if the U.S. policy on refugees was intended to weaken Syria, the Embassy spokesman stated that the Bush Administration was well aware of the burden on his country, and, instead of appointing competent individuals to deal with the issue, the White House fielded a team of amateurs (author’s words) such as former Maryland politician, Ellen Sauerbrey, who was chosen as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration . (In this capacity, Sauerbrey had primary responsibility for mis-handling the Iraqi refugee crisis, doing little of substance for the victims of America’s war.) Neither Bush nor Sauerbrey publicly recognized all that Syria had done for the exiles, Mr. Salkini said.

Mr. Salkini wanted to look forward, rather than backward, hoping that President Obama would realize that part of the issue is Iraq’s and the rest is the U.S.’s responsibility.

The State Department

As noted, a State Department official commented that there are fewer refugees in Syria and Jordan than were stated by the Syrian Embassy or the Villanova Law School’s April 2008 forum at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., “The Iraqi Refugee Crisis”. The U.S. Department of State is assiduously working, he said, with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), UNHCR, and the Red Cross, to alleviate refugees’ problems in Syria and Jordan. The U.S. preferred to work with international agencies rather than governments because they were generally well-run and organized, we were told. He added that refugees returning to Iraq are easy to measure but that it is hard to number those internally displaced by war in Mesopotamia. He added that non-refoulement (no return to a place where lives or freedom are threatened) is United States policy and that the Iraqi government is trying to persuade its people to return, proving small benefits such as jobs, housing, and money to those who do.

Our contact touched on U.S. visas for Iraqis who had worked for the American military, State Department, and contractors in the Black Land. The only requirement was that they had to have worked at least a year in order to be eligible. Unfortunately, with the visa in hand (obtained through the Embassy’s Consular Section), help in the United States didn’t extend very far, as our Iraqi interlocutor noted. They would be met at the airport here, given $400, and provided some basic counseling. In Sweden, by contrast, he said, Iraqi refugees get 2 years of networking assistance and support. U.S. State Department help lasts only for 60 days, then social services take over.

When asked if it were Israeli policy to destabilize Syria by influencing the U.S. government’s withholding of aid to refugees, the State Department official denied that idea, adding that America wanted to help the people who had worked with its government as translators as well as those in special categories such as Chaldean Catholics. The Department of State provided $150 million per annum for Iraqi refugee aid (with USAID handling the internally displaced). The U.S. government’s worldwide refugee budget, he said, totaled only $1 billion. Heretofore, the U.S. had been concerned with resettling Somalis and Burmese. Now, Iraqis have come to the fore. American policy for Iraqis, he commented, is to concentrate on helping the least likely to return home as well as the most vulnerable. But, the spokesman continued, the number of newly-required identity and security checks, along with the number of U.S. bureaucracies involved, tended to slow things down, especially in the “post 9/11 world”

The State Department’s spokesman denied that the Iraqi refugee crisis could be likened to the Palestinian “problem” because it wasn’t a struggle for land. He compared it to Vietnam where Malaysia, Singapore, and other Southeast Asian nations allowed a flood of refugees into their territory because the U.S. had promised to eventually take them in.

Noting that Syrian has proven generous to the Iraqi refugee population, State’s spokesman said that, despite past icy relations, it is getting easier to get into the country and talk to the refugees.

Finally, the State Department official told us that he expected little improvement in the number of Iraqi refugees admitted to the U.S. There is a worldwide cap of 70,000 refugee visas and to give more help to Iraqis would take refugee visas away from other nationalities. He said the burden of helping the Iraqis lies with Syria and Jordan.

In contrast, Michele Pistone, Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law and Director of its Clinic for Asylum, Refugees, and Emigrant Services, hopes President Obama will change this situation. She said he is not lumbered by past U.S. policy mistakes, adding that refugee issues are too often tied to politics, such as in the aftermath of Vietnam, where resettling hundreds of thousands of refugees was made part of America’s withdrawal from that nation, devastated by the U.S. armed forces.

Conclusion

America is a failed state. After 5 years of war that failed to benefit either the capitalists or Israel, the United States is still unable or unwilling to acknowledge defeat and withdraw its storm troopers from the Black Land within 30 days. (It took only 19 days for them to march into Baghdad.) Worse, the United States is still unable or unwilling to recognize the damage it has done to Iraq, its infrastructure, and its people. Fifteen per cent of Iraq’s population are refugees and permanently displaced people. To put this in context, 15% of the American population is 45 million citizens–imagine if a group of people greater than the population of Canada, more than half the population of Germany, or two-thirds the population of France, or two-thirds the population of the United Kingdom was left homeless by war.

The State Department spokesman is entirely correct. Nothing will be done about the Iraqi refugees and internally displaced citizens (or the flood of Afghan refugees from Barack Obama’s scheduled escalation of the conflict there). If only Iraqis (and not Afghanis) were given all the 70,000 U.S. refugees visas available annually, it would take 57 years to bring them to America, almost as long as the Palestinians have been held in Israeli concentration camps.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s final lines from Ozymandias are most apt:
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Author’s Note: Other stories will follow. The pain and suffering of the Iraqi people continue and so will our efforts to chronicle them.

J. Michael Springmann is an attorney based in Washington, D.C. He previously spent 20 years in the federal government, most recently as chief of the visa section at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

It’s obvious: imaginary terrorists. Americans, once hard-headed realists, now seem to be the driving force behind bogeymen under every bed. And, it appears, they have sold this climate of fear to the once very rational, very hard-headed Europeans.

On December 31, 2015, RT, the international news channel, reported that the French and the Belgians had canceled New Year’s celebrations in Paris and Brussels—because of supposed threats of terrorist attacks. RT added that Munich had closed two railroad stations since there were also reports of possible extremist incidents. (Munich’s response, according to the Washington Post of January 1, 20016, came after being “tipped off by a[n unidentified] foreign intelligence service”—Israel’s?). The Post added that authorities closed Moscow’s Red Square on New Year’s Eve. The paper implied terrorist threats caused this, a statement disputed by a former Russian government official. A Belgian contact noted that the streets of Brussels are still full of soldiers, the police are searching houses in Molenbeek, an Arab and Muslim area of the city, the restaurants are only half full, and the transport system in the capital shut down at 10 p.m. on December 31. She said the entire populace is now afraid.

Suspicious people might wonder at this. Following the August 21, 2015 incident aboard the Thalys express train, RT announced September 18, 2015, an unarmed, unidentified man had locked himself in a toilet aboard the Thalys, claiming he had a bomb. Police evacuated the train along with seven platforms in Rotterdam. What’s so interesting about the first event was that it was providently foiled by two American soldiers (one just back from Afghanistan) and a Briton, alleged to have a military contractor background. (His partner, we’re told, runs EU train security.) They just happened to be traveling on a luxury train running through Germany, Belgium, Holland, and France when a Moroccan came out of the toilet carrying an AK-47.

Were the Thalys incidents a test-drive for the politics of fear?

The attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015 sure helped. They followed the January 15, 2015 gunfire at the alleged satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in reality, an anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic rag. But, the shoot-out helped build a worldwide climate of hatred and fear of Muslims.

What appears to be the basis for a rising tide of hatred and fear is the rising tide of migrants from Arab and Muslim countries. According to a German contact, they’ve even reached Süßen, a small town of some 10,000 people 45 km. (ca. 27 miles) east of Stuttgart. The municipality is housing them in a sports-hall, she said.

According to Deutsche Welle (Germany’s international broadcaster), Czech President Miloš Zeman has compared the refugees arriving in Europe to a Trojan horse. He called the influx an “organized invasion.” The news service continued, quoting from Zeman’s December 24 Christmas message, that [he] “warned against welcoming asylum seekers and described the European culture of hospitality as naïve.” The Czech President added “I am profoundly convinced that we are [not] facing…a spontaneous movement of refugees.” Zeman, elected head of state in early 2013, further noted “A large majority of the illegal migrants are young men in good health, and single. I wonder why these men are not taking up arms to go fight for the freedom of their countries against the Islamic State”.

Zeman was not alone in castigating this Migration of Peoples, die Vőlkerwanderung.

Viktor Orbán, Hungarian Prime Minister, described the refugees entering Europe as “looking like an army”. Quoted in the Guardian, as speaking at a gathering of conservative parties from across the Continent, Orbán said: “What we have been facing is not a refugee crisis. This is a migratory movement composed of economic migrants, refugees and also foreign fighters. This is an uncontrolled and unregulated process.” Continuing, he added, “[The] Right to human dignity and security are basic rights. But neither the German nor the Hungarian way of life is a basic right of all people on the Earth.”

According to EurActiv.com, a summit of the “Visegrad Four” countries – the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland– held in Prague on September 4, 2015, rejected mandatory quotas for taking refugees, but said the group wanted to contribute to tackling the crisis and protect the Schengen border-free zone. (The 1985 Schengen, Luxemburg agreement guaranteed free movement of people within most of the EU.) Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz claimed refugee quotas would attract further migrants to the EU. Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, who chaired the meeting, asserted discussions about refugee quotas did not go to the point. The core of the problem is the EU incapability to regulate migration and the situation in the countries like Syria and Libya, he argued. “We agreed that the debate on quotas has only one purpose. It diverts attention from the real core of the problem. Europe [has] lost [the] capability to regulate migration,” Sobotka said.

And it’s not just the smaller states of Europe who speak out against this Vőlkerwanderung.

According to CNN, Russian President Vladimir Putin “…point[s] the finger at Europe and the United States for what has now become one of the biggest mass migrations of people in modern times.” Putin further noted “…[in] talking to reporters Friday [September 4, 2015], it’s the West’s wrong-headed foreign policy in the Middle East and Northern Africa that’s at the root of the crisis.”

CNN added, “Putin, speaking to the Russian news agency TASS, said he warned the West about the possible consequences of its Mideast and Africa policy several years ago. ‘What is this policy about? This is imposing its standards without taking into consideration historic, religious, national and cultural specifics of these regions,’ Putin told…TASS at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. ‘This is first of all, the policy of our American partners. I am looking with surprise at certain American mass media now criticizing Europe for an excessively tough, as they believe, treatment of migrants,’ Putin added.” Europe is “blindly following U.S. instructions” and suffering greatly, he said.

Well, just how did this supposed spontaneous migration come to Europe? We could suggest that this is similar to the mujahideen migrating to Afghanistan to change the attitude of the Soviet Union. Besides recruiting terrorists and “migrants” in Saudi Arabia, using American consular offices in Dhahran, Jeddah, and Riyadh, there were 52 hiring offices in the United States, including one in Washington, D.C. Overseen by the al-Farukh mosque in Brooklyn (with the aid of the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a CIA recruit), the various bureaus transferred money as well as recruits abroad. Who’s to say these organizations were never shut down? Who’s to say these organizations were never expanded? Who’s to say these organizations don’t operate in the Middle East and South Asia?

Sheikh Abdullah Anas, son-in-law of Abdullah Azzam, the tutor to Osama bin Laden, might be able to tell us. But, he doesn’t talk, perhaps for fear of jeopardizing his asylee status in Great Britain—and possibly harming his opportunity for emigrating to the United States.

But, what’s going to become of all this? As one astute analyst of the European scene noted:

Immigration and integration politics, and confrontations with Muslim conservatives over education, women’s rights, and the relationship between the state and religion are likely to strengthen right-of-center political organizations and splinter the left-of-center political coalitions that were instrumental in building it.

And what will this lead to? As that observer sagely added:

Germany’s national security is on the verge of collapse… [Expect] militarization of Germany in domestic and international domains as a result of this crisis and respective changes in German and anticipated EU changes in laws… [Look for] restriction of freedom of speech and hate speech laws, No-Go Zones, strictly enforced protest zones…. Europe moves to the political right in fear and attempted public self-defense, uncomfortably far to the right……[As the result of] the groups, individuals and motives behind the entire manufactured mass migration crisis…

In other words, fear.

COMMENT: Instead of investigating this man-made crisis, instead of holding people to account for their actions, governments and news media, even long-established ones with capable journalists, parrot phrases about the need to help the unfortunates. The unfortunates are certainly not going to help the peoples and their governments. And it’s likely too late for any effective action. Look at the United States and its 20 million (if not more) illegal aliens. Every time a politician complains about what they’ve done to the country’s culture, the Left shouts him down as a racist who wants to send productive people back to failed states with repressive governments. The same situation obtains in Europe: the Good Man, the Gutmensch, welcomes the illegals fleeing war and devastation. (But neglect to say that the United States and its repressive allies in the region have created this chaos.)

The current invasion of Europe by migrants escaping civil war in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan and economic ills in North and sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia was planned by an adviser to the U.S. Defense Department, Ford Foundation, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In 2010, Kelly Greenhill, an adviser to the U.S. government; chair of the Conflict, Security and Public Policy Working Group at Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center; former Senate aide to John Kerry; and associate professor of political science at Tufts, wrote a book titled, “Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy.” Greenhill’s book has become as much a template for creating social disorder through forced mass migration as retired University of Massachusetts professor Gene Sharp’s books on “themed revolutions” have become road maps for causing government coups through the use of social media.

Unlike Sharp’s methodology of relying on synthetic social and political movements created from outside a targeted country, which can have mixed results as seen in Egypt, Greenhill views weapons of mass migration as the most effective method to achieve sure results.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel began implementing the main tenets of Greenhill’s book after its publication in 2010. In addition to the arrival of new bodies for Germany’s work force, Merkel saw a mass influx by refugees as a way for her to enable the German military, security, and intelligence services to take a more active role in domestic German affairs.

The anti-terrorism forces of the German Special Operations Command (Spezialeinsatzkommandos or SEK) have already swung into action against jihadist “refugees” who have initiated mass violence inside German migrant shelters. It is only a matter of time before the SEK and other security forces begin to take action against newly-arrived jihadist troublemakers in German cities and towns like Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne, Munich, and Berlin.

Merkel’s government has mobilized the “Regional Backup and Support Staff” (Regionale Sicherungs- und Unterstützungskräfte or RSUKr), a “homeland security” force of military reservists. Since 2012, the RSUKr has had the authority to engage in domestic law enforcement inside Germany. If the RSUKr evokes memories of the Gestapo, it should. Currently content with conducting “anti-terror” raids on mosques and suspected jihadist homes in Germany, Merkel does not seem concerned about putting this counter-terrorism “genie” back into the bottle after it takes care of the jihadist threat.

According to various media reports named W2EU (Welcome to European Union). Migrants in Greece are handed a booklet written in Arabic and published by W2EU that instructs new arrivals in Germany how to travel to Germany and ask for asylum, food, housing and the much-prized Hartz IV unemployment benefits.

Another NGO assisting the migrants is MigrationAid Hungary, which has coordinated Twitter messages to a surprisingly large number of young men with iPhones who are neither refugees nor Syrians. Twitter, the favorite tool of Soros NGOs in coordinating the Lotus Revolution in Egypt and the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, assists migrants to transit the designated corridor from Turkey into Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, and, ultimately, Salzburg, Austria where the German government runs countless special trains into Germany. European media has reported that trucks have been discovered at various refugee collection centers with cargos of blank Syrian passports for sale. In addition, thousands of fake Syrian passports have been issued by human trafficking operations organizing massive streams of migrants from Asia and Africa into Germany.

Merkel’s open door policy for migrants, has, at its roots, the desire by large German corporations to produce new ranks of cheap labor to offset the population reduction within the European Union, especially with the first major wave of retiring “baby boomers.” The German Labor Ministry reports that only ten percent of the migrants are employable and many are noticed by German immigration and security authorities to be Salafists. Essentially, Merkel is receiving more Salafists than potential laborers among the new arrivals.

While the policy of importing fresh workers into Germany has the support of Merkel loyalists within her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and her coalition partners, the Social Democrats headed by Sigmar Gabriel, who is willing to sacrifice German workers for Asians and Africans in their own country, it has faced opposition from Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union of Bavarian Minister-President Horst Seehofer.

In a traditional display of Bavarian independence from Berlin, Seehofer has made common cause against Merkel’s migrant “welcome wagon” with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a one-time political acolyte of Soros, and the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party headed by Heinz-Christian Strache. A supranational “Danube Alliance” of Hungary, Bavaria, and the Austrian Freedom Party has emerged to oppose further mass migration of Syrian, Iraqi, and other refugees into central Europe.

The danger of Germany and other European countries being swamped by mostly Muslim refugees is backed up by real numbers and statistics. Merkel approved one million refugees from Syria, Iraq, and other countries. The German government estimates that number may soon increase to 1.5 million because a large number of arriving migrants are made up of family units. German government statistics reveal that each approved asylum seeker brings into Germany an average of 4.5 relatives, which means the current estimate of 1.5 million may soon increase to 6 to 7 million. Currently on foot and other means of transportation are between 500,000 to 700,000 additional migrants who have recently set out for Europe from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The UNHCR and the EU are now estimating that 3.7 million migrants will arrive in Europe “within several months.” Such a demographic change for Europe will irrevocably change the face of Europe as we now know it.

At a migrant camp in Leipzig, several hundred radical Afghans attacked another group of secular Syrians, resulting in a number of injuries. Rapes of migrant women in the camps and Germans in nearby neighborhoods outside the migrant camps have skyrocketed. According to media reports, migrant women and children are pimped out by migrant gangs for 10 euros for sex inside camps. Many German women are now avoiding leaving their homes and walking alone out of fear of rape from their new foreign “neighbors.” There are also increasing evidence that pedophiles are now preying on young migrant children. Recently, a four year-old Bosnian boy named Mohamed was abducted, raped, and murdered by a pedophile. The boy was stolen from his mother at a migrant processing center in Berlin. The police discovered that the murderer, who has been arrested, hid the body of the boy in the trunk of his car and used kitty litter to suppress the odor caused by decomposition.

There is a definite difference between jihadist agitators in the migrant camps and the normal migrant populations of women, children, and the elderly. The radicals are young men, many in possession of iPhones, which the jihadists in Syria, Iraq, and other countries have used to coordinate their attacks with great success. These Salafists and jihadists routinely challenge Germans about their Christian religion, consumption of alcohol, apparel deemed “un-Islamic,” and acceptance of homosexuality. The highest number of male radicals are from Afghanistan, followed by Iraqis, Syrians, Bangladeshis, and West Africans. Merkel’s government is working with Facebook owner Jeffrey Zuckerberg to identify and incarcerate not jihadist migrants who are using social media to plan violent acts but Germans who post what are considered “hateful” Facebook messages about the criminal nature of the jihadist hooligans. The German government is guiding the street protests by restricting anti-immigration protests to “free speech zones.” Authorities are also permitting pro-immigration protests in separate designated free speech zones. These opposing protests, with a heavy police presence, feature the far-right and neo-Nazi anti-immigrant PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident) on one side and protesters representing the Soros-funded Green Party and anti-Nazi ANTIFA (anti-fascists), as well as the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) who have turned out to be more disruptive and violent than the neo-Nazis themselves. Also arrayed against Merkel’s policies is the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right Euro-skeptic party that has seen increasing popularity.

Merkel, who was rumored to be a strong candidate to succeed Ban Ki-moon as Secretary General of the United Nations, now may be run out of Berlin on a political rail. In 1529, the seventy-year old Count Nicholas of Salm commanded the Viennese troops who defeated the invading Muslim Turks in the first siege of Vienna. Merkel now stands ready to reverse Nicholas’s achievement at the gates of Vienna almost 500 years ago.